


Crack

by TsarinaTorment



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, It's Lucille's, Mountains, Past Character Death, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29814867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TsarinaTorment/pseuds/TsarinaTorment
Summary: When a storm gets too intense for Thunderbird One to fly, Scott has to hunker down and wait it out.
Kudos: 10





	Crack

Scott loved Thunderbird One. She was his other – better – half and he'd racked up more flight hours in her than any other craft during his extensive piloting career. Together, pilot and Thunderbird, they had faced down many situations, and together, they always got through. State of the art, the very cutting edge of aeronautical engineering and kept that way through constant upgrades from Brains, there was very little that could stop her.

Not even Scott was willing to pilot in _this_ storm. It had been fine – some buffeting winds and even some sheering ones as they'd danced around the mountains together, collecting stranded and struggling climbers – but barely moments after he'd dropped the shivering but grateful people off safely at base camp and got back into the air, it had turned severe.

Worse than severe. Thunderbird One had told him, loudly and with many red holograms, that she was not interested in flying in _this_ weather, Scott, and through a crackled line with storm interference, John had been saying something, too. He hadn't heard what, but he hadn't had to.

Scott knew he had a reputation for recklessness. He also knew that he was stubborn, and a damn good pilot. It was that latter point that had had him guiding his weather-tossed Thunderbird onto the first clear and stable area he could find to wait out the storm. Contrary to popular belief, he knew exactly what his limits were.

This? This was beyond them. Thunderbird One, as amazingly beautiful a craft as she was, had sacrificed much in the way of stability for speed and manoeuvrability. Winds whipping around crags with no discernible pattern, and too many jagged edges waiting to snag a plane that blew too close, were the worst possible flying conditions for her. Scott had no intentions of adding to the list of names in their family that had met their end to a mountain or in a plane crash.

There were too many names on that list already.

Hopefully, this wouldn't last too long. With the weather disrupting signals from Thunderbird Five, he couldn't even tell John that he'd landed safely, let alone get any data on the storm itself. Scott might not have been able to hear John's last transmission, but he'd got enough data from it to know his brother was worried. With his reputation for recklessness, there was a reasonable chance that his family feared he'd try to make the journey home regardless. Radio silence for too long would do nothing to abate their fears.

Scott just hoped the rest of his family were safe, wherever they were in the world right then, and not caught up in this or another storm.

There was a _crack_ that could have been lightning, or could have just been something shifting under the unrelenting winds on the peaks around him. With his link to Five disrupted, he couldn't check the weather data, and leaving the safety of his warm, dry Thunderbird to investigate didn't appeal to him in the slightest.

He wasn't _scared_ of mountains, but he was never going to forget the day one claimed Mom's life. He was also cold and wet from his earlier forays into the weather, before it got quite so terrible and he was still saving lives. There was a spare uniform in a locker in the cargo bay, and towels to dry off. Logically, the sensible thing to do would have been to take the time to get changed, rather than sit in wet clothes, water dribbling down his face from where his hair had got wet at the base camp. He shouldn't have taken the helmet off, but talking to people with it on once they were out of danger always felt a little too impersonal.

Scott's relationship with logic was somewhat on and off. While John stuck to it like glue and his one true love (a title also shared between space and physics), Scott listened to it when it suited him.

With his communications all cut off by the storm, there were no witnesses. Cold, wet, and memories of Mom's final hours a little too close for comfort, Scott pulled his knees up to his chin, muddy boots cramming on the edge of his seat and arms wrapped around his shins to keep them in place.

Outside, the wind howled threats, a combination of haunting shrieks and furious bellows. Rain lashed down hard on the cahelium hull of his Thunderbird, a constant thundering that echoed around the enclosed space and sounded much too loud for drops of water. Randomly, One would shudder as a gust buffeted her too hard from one side, or whipped around under an extended wing, trying to force her up into the air.

All the grapples at her disposal were firmly deployed. The ground she was perched on was more likely to peel away from its surroundings than she was from it; Brains took no chances, and Scott was thankful for that. Still, every time she juddered, or leaned slightly to one side, his grip on his shins tightened.

He wasn't _scared_. He just knew that in the face of nature, he was insignificant. The storm and mountains didn't care for a single, squishy human in a plane. If they ever did, International Rescue wouldn't be needed.

Mom would still be alive.

Scott trusted Thunderbird One and the genius behind her with his life, but that didn't make it any easier to be stranded in similar terrain to where Mom had taken her last breaths.

Water dripped from his hair onto his knees. There was the familiar sensation of mud on his face, no doubt rubbed there by the uniform he was pressing it against. Something wet trickled down the back of his neck, slipping inside his collar.

He should get changed. Dry off, at least, but it was so long since Scott had last been truly _alone_ that those ideas were barely fleeting observations in the back of his mind. Even if he was shaking as the cold seeped in, past the neoprene defences and deep into his bones.

It was definitely the cold, and not fear.

Scott wasn't _scared_.

Just alone, with the wind experimenting how many different eerie and threatening noises it could make and nudging at the single man-made item in its clutches as though determined to tear it from the mountains. With the rain, hammering down with what sounded like enough brute force to dent the metal.

With the periodic _cracks_ that could be mountainside or lightning. _Cracks_ that sounded too much like the one he heard when he was fourteen and the mountain stole his Mom.

The _crack_ that changed his life forever.

Trembling fingers clung harder to neoprene-covered calves, arms wrapped so far around his legs he might as well have been a human pretzel. More moisture seeped through onto his knees, too close to where his eyes were pressed to be a coincidence.

He wasn't crying, the water from his hair had just run into his eyes on its way down his face.

Thinking about Mom hurt. Somewhere in his heart, Scott knew that he'd never properly mourned her. Sure, there had been the funeral, and the sombre air of tragedy permeating through their home that had never really left, but when Mom had died, Dad had been on the Moon and there had been four tearful faces looking up at him.

Four little brothers that _needed_ him.

By the time all four little brothers maybe didn't need him to always be there, he'd been nineteen and then the Zero-X had happened and-

Scott cut his thoughts off there. Mom was one thing. Dad another. Both simultaneously was more than he could handle.

His brothers came first, always, and he'd pushed his own grief into a box in the back of his mind to be dealt with later – a _later_ that still hadn't come. A _later_ Scott kept pushing back further and further because he had to be strong and time alone was a rarity. Even his Air Force stint had seen him surrounded by squadmates and never a moments' peace. Now, with International Rescue and at least one brother only a word away at all times, he was still never alone.

This storm, these howling winds and lashing rains and maybe-lightning-maybe-mountain _cracks_ , was the first time he'd been _alone_.

Scott gripped his calves so tightly he pinched the skin against neoprene and tried not to jump when another, louder _crack_ split the air.

Closer.

It was probably lightning, logic told him. These mountains were ancient bastions of stability, not known for excessive rockfalls or worse. For John, that would be enough. John could cling to logic and shut out the niggling doubts in a way Scott sometimes found himself envious of.

Scott's own hold on logic, less than tight at times, didn't let him find security in the thoughts.

He was safe in Thunderbird One. He knew that. The harness was still lowered, and despite his boots muddying up the edge of the seat instead of the footplates, he was secure. Cold, wet and definitely only trembling from those two factors and nothing related to those _cracks_ , but secure.

He should dry off and get changed, mitigate the shivering and cut off any reasons for the medics of the family to eye him critically and declare him grounded until they were confident he wasn't going to get sick, but that meant leaving the seat.

The fourteen-year-old whose life had been irrevocably changed by a single _crack_ did not want to leave the seat. With no witnesses to see the teenager he'd never really got to be yanked to the surface by a storm, Scott couldn't bring himself to move, either.

He wasn't _scared_. There was no fear paralysis kicking in and keeping him there. He just… he just…

He just remembered that day too well, and it established itself more and more firmly at the front of his mind with every _crack_ that snapped into his ears.

He just wanted his Mom back.

It was nearly half his life ago, now, since she'd been stolen. Another year and he'd cross over into the unstable realm of having lived longer without her than with her.

Everyone thought he was a Dad's boy. Of course they did; he'd always looked up to his father, watching his exploits with wonder on his face and a determination to follow in his heart. But Scott remembered long months without Dad, when he was off on the Moon or even Mars and it was just Scott, an ever-increasing number of little brothers, and Mom.

He loved Dad, but it was Mom that had raised him. Dad had been – still was – his hero, but Mom had been _Mom_. Mom had taught him to be kind, demonstrated what unconditional love meant and even tried to get the little boy who always had to go fast to understand patience.

Then she was _gone_ and he tried his best to pass those lessons down but he'd never been as good at it as Mom. She'd been such a huge influence on his life, but in a year he'd have lived longer without her than with her, and that box of grief was still stuffed in the back of his head for a _later_ that would never come.

A _later_ that sensed he was alone and all his excuses why he couldn't address it now were being blown down by an aggressive wind or washed away by a torrent of rain.

_Crack_.

He didn't remember what Mom looked like. Not exactly. Sure, he had photos, and old holovideos, but things got _lost_ , like the exact colour of her eyes, or the aura of love she exuded no matter what. He didn't remember her perfume, or even if she'd worn any.

He didn't remember the last thing she said to him. It could have been _don't forget your gloves_ , or _keep an eye on your brothers_ or it could have been something else entirely. When the topic came up with his brothers on the rare occasions they talked about her, the day, he lied and said it was _go carefully_ _and I'll see you at the bottom_.

He just remembered the _crack_ , and a faceless man saying _sorry, kid, but she didn't make it_. Remembered four terrified faces looking up at him and needing their big brother to fix something that could never be fixed. He'd tried anyway.

Thunderbird One lurched again, fighting the storm trying to fling them away from their relative safety lashed to the ground, and Scott jerked against the harness like a rag doll.

He didn't ease his death grip on his legs. Couldn't. Pressed his forehead tighter to the apex of his knees and let more mud from the uniform smear his face, mingling with the water running down the skin.

The storm would pass. Thunderbird Five's connection would be restored and then he wouldn't be alone again as John hovered for the entire flight home and the rest of his family chimed in over comms. Scott knew that, clung to it as he tried to drive his fourteen-year-old self back into the box he should never have left. Tried to shove the memories, both the faded and the too clear, of _Mom_ back in that box, before the thoughts overwhelmed him.

He just had to sit, cold, wet and shivering with boots muddying up the seat, in the safety of Thunderbird One and wait out the storm. Then he could go home, get changed and dry off and do his best to ignore the disapproving clucks from the family medics as they threatened him with the words _trying to_ _make yourself sick_ and _grounded_. Then everything would be normal again and the box in the back of his mind could be brushed aside for a later that he never wanted to come.

_Crack._

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely gumnut-logic's fault. 'Twas her suggestion that got my muse raving away, therefore we are blaming Nutty for this. I actually wrote this back in December, but held off on posting it because it feels like there might be room for another part, maybe a certain brother or few's point of view. However, uni is mean, my muses are elsewhere, and while this might one day get another chapter, that's a firm maybe so for now we're marking this as complete.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> Tsari


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